VSC Training Course: Parallel I/O

Delivering high performance I/O is a crucial part of modern high-performance computing (HPC) systems which is usually accomplished by providing different filesystems to ensure that the cluster can handle the varying workloads of its users. This course will start with an introduction to the basics of I/O, an overview over parallel filesystems with a focus on BeeGFS, and the storage hardware available at VSC. Different I/O strategies will be presented from an applications view. The second day will introduce the use of the HDF5 and NetCDF (NetCDF4 and PnetCDF) library interfaces, two important libraries for parallel I/O an portable data formats. Hands-on exercises (in C/C++ or Fortran) will allow to immediately test and understand their usage. Performance hints, optimization potential, and best practices for I/O will be discussed in detail throughout the whole course.